Southern Voices
2009
Southern Voices • Volume XXI • Spring, 2009
Staff
Judges
Editors
Art and Photography Judge
Tiffany Croft
Elizabeth Seratt
Ms. Rachel Smith
Executive Director, Columbus Arts Council
Columbus, Mississippi
Assistant Editors
Essay Judge
Cecily Carlisle
Boram Lee
Dr. Nancy Hargrove
Art Editor
Miranda Shugars
Photographer
Joshua Lonthair
Staff Members
Robert Cook Pauline Dyer Tiffany Harris Clayton Jacobs Jack Li Parker Lundy
Marie Rowland
Thompson Segars
Rachel Selph
Christopher Vick
Cover Art
Kalina Deng
Cover Design and Magazine Layout
Miranda Shugars
Boram Lee
Art Contest Faculty Coordinator
William L. Giles Distinguished Professor
Emerita of English
Mississippi State University, Starkville, Mississippi
And author of
Landscape as Symbol in the Poetry of T.S. Eliot
(University Press of Mississppi, 1978)
The Journey Toward Ariel: Sylvia Plath’s Poetry of 1956-1959
(Lund University Press, 1994)
T.S. Eliot’s Parisian Year
(University Press of Florida; Fall, 2009)
Poetry Judge
Dr. Dwight L. Eddins
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
And author of
The Gnostic Pynchon
(Indiana University Press, 1990)
Yeats: The Nineteenth Century Matrix
(University of Alabama Press, 1971)
And editor of
The Emperor Redressed: Critiquing Critical Theory
(University of Alabama Press, 1995)
Angie Jones
Short Story Judge
Mr. John Pritchard
Faculty Advisor
Author of
Junior Ray (NewSouth, 2005)
The Yazoo Blues (NewSouth, 2008)
Emma Richardson
On the Cover:
Pocketful of Sunshine
Kalina Deng
Acrylic
Table of Contents
Poetry
Cecily Carlisle
Sedentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Speakin’ of People and Places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Robert Cook
She Told Me to Write About My Memories . . . . 34
The Tree in My Front Yard Is Normal . . . . . . . 34
Tiffany Croft
Cotton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Waitress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Off of Route 22 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Pauline Dyer
Our Mud Pile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Tiffany Harris
Lovely Ladybug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Clayton Jacobs
Airplane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Boram Lee
A Thousand Cranes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Kitchen Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Fly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Jack Li
Earthly Delights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Parker Lundy
The Real Bible Belt Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Marie Rowland
I Do Believe in Fairies! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Elizabeth Seratt
Once Upon a Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
We Buried Him Under a Grey Sky . . . . . . . . . . 15
Miranda Shugars
Hummingbird . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
almond branches in bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Short Stories
Cecily Carlisle
A Nobody’s Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Tiffany Croft
Waiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Christina Moore
When Surya Ceased to Smile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Thompson Segars
Lifeguard on Duty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Elizabeth Seratt
Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Miranda Shugars
Trapped . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Christopher Vick
Extra Cheese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Essays
Cecily Carlisle
Mississippi Soil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Tiffany Croft
Dry Creek: Intimations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Boram Lee
W. Carnation Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Marie Rowland
Breaking Bricks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Rachel Selph
How Long? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Elizabeth Seratt
The Sound of My Father . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Miranda Shugars
Sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Christopher Vick
Mockingbirds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Drawing
Kalina Deng
Mississippi Queen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Jane Girard
Winter Mockingbird . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Lawson King
Nowhere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Marie Rowland
Behold a White Horse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Stephen Smith
Dr. House . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Dong Song
Echo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Match Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Ena Wei
Forms in Graphite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Painting
Kalina Deng
Pocketful of Sunshine . . . . . . . . . . . . Front Cover
Edge of Reason . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Sweta Desai
Golden Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Paradise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Rose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Casey Dickson
Simplicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Aisha Lyons
Leaning Tower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
A Taste of Mississippi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Erin Rauenhorst
Endless Daisies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Stephen Smith
Piano . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Alex Wang
December . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Photography
Austin Clinton
Car in Old-Fashioned Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Tiffany Croft
Mirror Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Rooftop View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Southern Farm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Kate Dubickas
Bug’s Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
The Small Things in Focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Fish Out of Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Nature’s Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Ginny Kramer
St. Mary’s Cathedral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
18th Avenue, Meridian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Hide and Seek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Meridian Underground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Boram Lee
Hilton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Seaweed and Fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Joshua Lonthair
Cnidera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Niagara Falls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
The Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Lily . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
A Burst of Sunshine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
End of the Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Seas of Clouds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Elizabeth Seratt
Sunday Morning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Arriba! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Adam Stanford
Back to the Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
The Solitude of Contemplation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Sun-Kissed Snow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Shelby Steelhammer
ESP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Pinball . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
W. Carnation Street
Boram Lee
First Place—Essay Competition
The car swerved into W. Carnation
Street, and pebbles ricocheted off the bottom
of the car as smooth asphalt ended and rough
dirt roads began. You can’t find places like
this unless you look for them. There weren’t
many homes as we bounced along the lane,
just mostly walls of scrawny pine trees, patches
of grass, and the occasional arbitrary artifact:
a bent bike wheel, pieces of a rusted mailbox,
splintered fenceposts. Two tiny houses, like the
abandoned objects, occupied the otherwise flat
landscape and seemed to pop out of the ground
and fall apart where they stood. On the way to
the home of Mr. David, my father’s colleague,
the car passed a church that sat in a small
depression in the terrain, as if the earth were
in the process of swallowing it into its depths.
“Isn’t the summer hot enough for you?” stated
the message board trembling beside the whitewashed church. Most of the lettering was faded
except “hot enough,” and the stem of the “h”
leaned forward: not enough.
The Mississippi sun beat down in solid
waves, and all the humidity crashed down as
we finally got out of the car. Mr. David’s house
was white and had a flimsy screen door like
the apartment 1D Zygmunt Drive in Storrs,
Connecticut, we had lived in for seven years
before. It felt familiar already, and I smiled.
Mr. David’s voice was warm, although loud
and boisterous, and Mrs. Charlotte, his wife,
hugged my younger sister and my eleven-yearold self fiercely, although we had never met.
A large pool table took most of the space in
the living room, and a collection of unique
umbrellas, board games, throws, and other
paraphernalia crowded up what area remained:
messy, but comfy. I could smell the smoke from
the barbeque. Mr. David liked his hot dogs
black and was introducing my father to the
crunchy, burnt, yet delectable taste.
Sneaking a spoonful of corn salad, I
glanced outside the kitchen window across the
street. A blond girl my age was playing outside
with her younger brother. Mrs. Charlotte saw
my covert food thieving operations and sent me
out the door to play saying, “That’s Tara.” The
only Tara I’d ever heard of was the plantation
in Gone with the Wind. I remembered seeing the
door of the grandiose building in the Margaret
Mitchell Museum in Atlanta, Georgia. Huge,
white, beautiful, spotless, it embodied polite
Southern society, the gate to secret wonders. It
was such a pretty name, that when Tara asked
for my name, I gave her my last name as my
first.
She wore a yellowed T-shirt and shorts,
with no-shoes-callused feet, dirtied by the
clouds of dirt that sprang up whenever we
took a step. I wore a crisp, white blouse and a
new blue skirt with matching dress shoes. Her
house sat nearly opposite of Mr. David’s, babyblue and tattered. Tara followed my gaze and
threw me the ball she had been playing with.
Back and forth. Back and forth. The sphere of
rubber flew from our fingertips in the middle
of the road where cars rarely came or went. I
suddenly remembered an abandoned house that
my school bus passed by every morning. One
day, it had burned down, and nobody cared. It
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still squatted there, forgotten, with its rusted
“NO TRESPASSING” sign and broken glass,
a black scar scratched above a matted, charred
lawn. The image was unbearably poignant, and
the remembered feeling dragged at my heart
until Tara suddenly spoke.
“It’s just me and my mom. And my two
little brothers,” Tara said, as I threw the ball,
jumping backwards slightly to avoid an anthill.
Her eyes flickered constantly between the ball
and her little brother. For the sake of keeping
up the conversation, I told her about my family,
and asked her about school.
“I don’t go to school,” she said plainly, and
before I could say anything else, she continued
in a one-breath practiced answer, “I have to
watch my little brothers and help my mom,” and
smiled. Surprised, I wondered if she would cry
instead of grin while reciting this again when
she grew older, in this lazy place where cars
rarely came or went and tired pine boughs cast
slim shadows over dirt lanes; I couldn’t imagine
because school meant the future for me, meant
going places and seeing things, meant dreams
and hopes and the world. I wanted to ask if
it would be enough to live her whole life in
this single place with the baby-blue house and
sparsely scattered plots of grass, but I was afraid
that the church message board had already
answered the question for me before I even had
to ask.
We left W. Carnation Street late at night,
the car rolling and rocking and tumbling over
stray rocks and stones. None of us could decide
whether the “W” in “W. Carnation Street”
was an abbreviation because “White” couldn’t
fit onto the signpost, or stood for “West.” Was
there an East, South, North Carnation Street
also? Were girls living there who couldn’t go
to school? The darkness closed behind us as
the vehicle leapt eagerly onto the asphalt, and
the city lights glinted in the distance. Later,
both Mr. David and Mrs. Charlotte moved to
Georgia, and I wondered how Tara was doing.
But whenever I pictured her, her lips shaped
out, “Not enough.”
St. Mary’s Cathedral
Ginny Kramer
Second Place—Photography Competition
Dry Creek: Intimations
Tiffany Croft
I. Reading
On those summer days when moisture
beaded on the backs of necks and dripped
lazily down to feet caked in Mississippi mud,
I would wedge myself in between the washer
and dryer and read. It wasn’t an easy task,
moving my fading tie-dyed bean bag chair from
the dimness of my room to the open and airy
kitchen where Mama did laundry. I’d lean back
in the squishy chair and prop my feet on the
off-white dryer, letting the hum move up and
down my legs.
Mama would lug bags full of laundry
into the chess square tiled kitchen and plop
them down beside me, shaking her head at my
foolishness. She’d separate the colors—darks
from lights—and ask, “What’re you reading
this time?” I was always reading something:
mostly mystery novels; Nancy Drew or the
Hardy Boys would keep me occupied for hours
in that cranny. Sometimes, I’d look up and
watch the clothes bounce around in the washer,
mismatched socks chasing t-shirts through
murky water.
That’s when I’d think that someday I’d
write my own novels. Probably not mystery, no.
I wanted to write something that would change
the world, or at least the part of the world who
knew I existed.
Some days, when Mama had to work,
she’d drop me off at Nanny’s house. My grandmother lived in a two-bedroom sun-yellow
house about twenty yards from home. The
garden behind Nanny’s house always teemed
with fire-red tomatoes and crunchy snap peas
that Papaw and
I would pull and
eat straight from
the plant. Nanny
would often put me
to work shelling
Back to the Basics
peas. She’d set me
Adam Stanford
in front of a bucket
Honorable Mention—
full of peapods and
Photography Competition
I’d tenderly remove
the peas from the
shells, dropping the black-eyed peas into the
bucket and the slimy husks into a bag.
At the end of the day, when Mama would
pick me up, my purple-stained fingers would
ache in a good way. And that night, I would
curl up in my bean bag chair, the cool air brushing past the top of my head, and read.
II. Writing
The pen spits words onto blank paper; my
thoughts take shape as letters with sharp angles
and looped endings. Sometimes, the words
come easily and pour forth with little effort. At
other times, it is a struggle to say what needs
to be said. I do not give up, however. Instead, I
succumb to the need to fill what is blank. That
is why I write.
I have always been a writer. When I was
younger, my mother and I lived in a cramped
mobile home on a flat grassy lot in Dry Creek,
Mississippi. When I was not playing with the
few toys I had been given as Christmas gifts,
I sat on the front porch of our off-white home
and wrote tales of sharp-toothed dragons and
young maidens who needed to be rescued.
Once my mother re-married and gave
birth to my little sister, Heather, writing
became an even more crucial part of my life.
The marriage was not a happy one, so problems
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arose, and I spent endless hours in my room at
our new home.
“Why are you always writing?” my mom
would ask me, as she hung up laundry or
scrubbed dishes. Instead of answering, I would
shrug and return to my room, for the shining
suds had given me an idea for a story or poem.
Sometimes, my mother would come into
my room late at night and find me with my
head on my desk, pages of stories sticking to my
face. She would usher me to my bed and tell me
to get some sleep. I would not sleep, though.
My mind whirred with plots (will the girl end
up with this man or that one?), settings (Paris,
or maybe Rome), and the characters themselves
(red hair, blue eyes, and a sunny disposition).
It was not until high school that writing
became something more than a personal matter.
My freshman English teacher was the first
person to tell me that writing was something
that I should keep working at. I was beyond
surprised that the stories and poems that I had
written were more than just random thoughts.
They meant something and others just might
have wanted to read them.
From then on, I entered every writing
contest that I could get my hands on. Placing in
them was not my main priority. I merely wanted
what I had to say to be heard. I am, however,
proud of my handful of writing victories and
have learned from my even more numerous
rejections and failures.
I stop writing long enough to glance at
my right hand and the raised circle of hardened
skin that has formed there from years of writing with wooden pencils and ten-cent ballpoint
pens. Thoughts of today’s main character rattle
in my mind. Should she have blonde hair? Is she
a good person? How will her story end? Then, I
stretch my aching fingers, put pen to paper, and
begin to write.
Leaning Tower
Aisha Lyons
Acrylic
Bug’s Life
Kate
Kate Dubickas
Dubickas
Photograph
A Nobody’s Story
Cecily Carlisle
KATHY, Jimmi read from the nametag.
The plastic piece hovered, lost between a hefty
shelf of breasts and a set of wrinkled lips ribbed
in Midnight Ocean Blue, courtesy of Wet ‘n’
Wild number thirty-seven. Grasping her own
bony arm and gathering enough courage to peer
past the woman’s prow, Jimmi faced something
even more daunting than a full figure.
“Front counter.” The words slid from
Kathy’s jeering mouth.
Jimmi didn’t need to stay a day at Burger
World to know she loathed working behind the
front counter. She hated it all—the babies’ siren
whining, the crooked, trembling fingers of the
old plucking nickels from her sweating palm,
and the sordid stench of stained sanitary wipes
and dog-hot summer lingering in the lavatory
door frame. Nobody at the front counter was an
anybody.
She sighed a defeated “yes’m” and took
her post behind the cashbox and condiments.
Finding herself in the eye of a fast-food storm,
hanging between the breakfast and lunch rush,
Jimmi began surveying the “restaurant.” In
fact, the building was at best a cramped eatery:
the mustard-crusted tables that weren’t packed
against white-washed walls littered the little
remaining space between the soda fountain and
side door. The yellowed ceiling perforated the
empty air with the mechanical wheeze of trillion-watt light bulbs and the squealing electric
chords of a nineties no one on local station
KLOV98.
A stray wandered in, the youngest thirtyfour-year-old that Jimmi had ever seen. His
hair stuck stiff-up, a mere centimeter from his
carrot-colored skull, and above his army cargo
Forms in Graphite
Ena Wei
Pencil
Second Place, Drawing—Art Competition
shorts billowed a t-shirt bearing a nearly naked
Paris Hilton, splay-legged against a creamy
backdrop. The sadist.
Jimmi chewed the inside of her cheek,
restless, as the man pretended to consider the
menu behind her, or rather as he scanned her
cans, as her brother liked to say. Paris finally
chanced a lean upon the counter.
“Ready to order now?” Jimmi side-stepped
another whiff of his Family Dollar aftershave.
“Are you on the menu?”
“Not at this place.”
“Then I’ll have a number four, no onions.
To go.” He grinned.
“Five seventy-nine, please.” As Family
Dollar handled his crumpled five, Jimmi noted
the pale strip of skin that encircled his left ring
finger. She directed him to the other end of the
counter.
Her prim lips stiffening into a smile,
Jimmi watched silently as seven or so Hispanics
filed through the front entrance, and she
waited for their approach. The men muttered
in swelling waves of vowels, buzzing amongst
themselves. Oh’s, ah’s and breathless eh’s padded
Jimmi’s ears, their clicking consonants pricking
like Morse code. One of the men, muscled and
mustached, shuffled up to her.
“Hi, welcome to Burger World. Ready to
order?” Jimmi bit at her grin and winced.
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“Hola…Habla español?”
“Eh…sí, sí, piqueño.” The man leered,
and Jimmi surrendered a quick prayer to the
god of internationality that her dusty ninthgrade Spanish skills would be sufficient for
Kathy and the Hispanics. “Qué necesitas?”
“Uno numero dos, trés numero siete, non
con Ketchup, uno numero cuatro, y dos numero
diez, por favor.”
“Sí, sí. Yo repito: uno number dos, trés
number sen-te, con no Ketchup, uno number
cuatro, and dos number da-yez. Sí?”
“Eh…sí, sí.” They all nodded, chortling
and sharing the man’s smirk.
Donning her own plastic smile, Jimmi
eyed an incoming teenage couple and felt her
patience teeter once again toward its breaking
point. She hurriedly tapped onto the register
what she hoped was Mustache’s order, handed
the customer his two dollars of change, and
pulled seven bucket-sized cups from beneath
the counter.
The couple detached long enough for the
girl to rush for the restroom and the boy to
order two Cokes.
After seeing to the customers’ orders,
Jimmi too ventured to the Burger World bathroom. Her foot caught the crinkled edge of
some discarded cardboard container. HOME
PREGNANCY TEST.
Taking a tired seat on the single toilet,
Jimmi willed herself to relax. She melted into
her reflection, muddled in the toilet water
pooled between her Reeboks, and thought back
to Kathy’s dark face.
How many men had ogled Kathy’s generous bust? How many had wedding rings or even
ring shadows? Just how many secrets did those
blue lips keep, and how many languages lined
their corners? She thought to the could-maybebe baby. How many nobodies would he give his
secrets to?
Earthly Delights
Heaven is
A square room
Of wafting smells
And black metal pans on walls,
Where with spatula and chopsticks in hand,
A loving woman cooks
Teriyaki, beef, hot and sour,
Gravy, red, green, yellow,
For her loved ones.
Cnidera
Joshua Lonthair
Third Place Photograph—
Art Competition
I stare
Into a grimy window,
Shoes dripping with mud,
Sweat dripping from my brows,
At Mama cooking,
A greedy hunger,
Dripping from my mouth.
Jack Li
Mockingbirds
Christopher Vick
Darkness falls at 6 p.m. in the autumn
chill of Mississippi. Twilight seeps reds and
yellows and violets through the visible horizon, to be replaced with the eerie black that
follows. The crepuscular creatures frolic in their
moment of glory, while the rest of the world
pauses uneasily in the dramatic change, and
then continues with its life. I do my best writing at this time, when the winds become cool
and the streetlights pop on, like ideas suddenly
realized. Past the busyness of the daylight
hours, the darkness calms my mind, which
begins to engage itself in the words on the
page. Sometimes when I am not physically at
a computer or with a pencil at this time, I will
string together sentences in my head. Sentences
that I think are the best I’ve ever thought up.
Sentences that the great English poets and
American writers would become green with
envy after reading. Sentences that I can never
remember. Mathematics is a logical subject that
simply requires memorization—I can do that at
any hour. But writing takes time.
I’ve always wanted to be a writer. My
mother used to force my sister and me to read
at least one book every month when we were
in elementary school. And since the first time
I read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, I
became addicted to the English language.
Atticus Finch is one of my favorite characters;
a (rarely) gun-slinging lawyer who shines as a
beacon of hope in a time where hope is desperately needed. The art of manipulating words
into logical phrases, and still creating symbols
and deeper meanings, has fascinated me. And
how the words, unlike real life, are allowed to
be biased, are allowed to judge, and to question, and to make statements and demands for
change. Since then the plots, the settings, the
climaxes, the denouements, the characters of
every story have become engraved in my mind.
Characters so dynamic, so real, that when the
story ends, I have to sigh and stare at the back
cover, taking in the words once more. And then
read it again. It’s at these times I realize how
much more there remains to be said.
Harper Lee and other authors make my
mind shiver. They act as catalysts in me, as I
realize the depths to which writing can go. My
fingers twitch with every passing word, eager
for the time when they will form their own.
My brain reaches and grasps, desperate to find
the phrases that will compare. My heart skips
a beat each time I read Scout Finch and Boo
Radley’s exchanges, and how much more real
they are compared to the people I pass every
day.
I hope to be the cause of these inspirations, to catalyze a story of my own; through
teaching, maybe. Or perhaps just as a friend,
and become a character myself. But the best
would be through writing my own characters
and story, my own mockingbird, and that some
child, in the twilight hours, will discover it and
read it and finish it and stare at the back cover
and sigh, and read it again.
9
9
The Sound of My Father
Elizabeth Seratt
Honorable Mention—Essay Competition
10
“A long, long time ago,” crooned the
crackled speakers. During the first minute
or so, the tape whirred almost louder than
the piano and sad voice. Daddy’s rasped voice
sang along with Don McLean’s, creating an
unmatched echo. Fields, trees, cars, ditches
zoomed by as the tempo sped up.
We were going to see my grandmother,
the one who lives deep in the hills of Arkansas.
The sun hadn’t even begun to yawn, and the
moon had barely begun to hide behind the tall
oaks when we crossed the bridge that morning. I peeked through the window for the river,
but the only evidence of its existence was the
call of a tugboat, alone in the blanket of darkness that still wrapped my Delta world. Soon,
past Lake Chicot and the burned-down house,
pinks and yellows and creamsicle oranges began
to fight for control with the navy and black and
pricks of stars as Daddy’s big hands slipped
the tape into the player. It was an unspoken
tradition of ours to listen to the tape of Don
McLean’s second album until it sputtered
Niagara Falls
Joshua Lonthair
Photograph
to an end as we stopped for breakfast at the
McDonald’s in Dumas. On the next stretch of
highway, Daddy’d tell me the stories behind the
lyrics—Buddy Holly, the Beatles, the Rolling
Stones—and how music changed over the
course of his lifetime until I slipped into a doze
against the window to the sound of his deep
voice. After a while, Daddy would stop talking and start humming; I could always hear it,
no matter how far I’d stepped into dreamland.
When the sun was high and bright, Daddy
would turn on “American Pie” again. It was his
way of waking me up as the truck eased into the
shade of a thin tree.
The morning I left home, as the pick-up
moved over our uneven driveway, I turned to
look at the house in the soft August morning
light one more time. Piles of my possessions in
the bed of the truck obstructed my view, but I
could still see the rows of books on the church
pew by the back door, the gardening gloves and
shoes in the crate, the dog pillow, the magnolias. I closed my eyes, wanting to remember
every rough patch of cypress, the writing in the
poured concrete that hid in the shade of the
azaleas. Daddy rustled around, and then came
the hum of the tape player.
“A long, long time ago.”
Extra Cheese
Christopher Vick
Second Place—Short Story Competition
Daniel stood by the black cash register
looked for a seat, the girl following him.
behind the worn, wooden counter covered with
Reluctantly, Daniel noted. The man sat, but the
old-time photos and newspapers protected by a
girl stood by his table, looking around at the
sheet of glass, watching the shadow of the door
customers.
dance back and forth as it opened and closed.
“Daddy, watch me twirl!” she screeched,
The yellow sunlight was pale and hazy, as if too
loud enough for the few people in the small
tired to keep up its hue. The pizza ovens five
room to hear. Everyone in the restaurant turned
feet behind him made
and admired her
his back sweat as they
perfect spin, jump,
heated and his red
and stumble into the
uniform shirt stuck to
concrete, where she
his skin. The wetness
sat defeated like a
made him look greaswilting violet—violet,
ier than the regular
and slightly pathetic.
Italia’s pizza worker,
Not a very gracebut he was the only
ful ballerina, Daniel
one who was supposed
thought.
to work with the
Beside the
cash. His eyes turned
counter was a case
toward the customers
that held all the prewho came in.
made pizzas. Daniel took a
The Island
“Welcome to Italia’s, can
slice of the double-stuff and
Joshua Lonthair
I get you anything, sir?” he
the regular cheese and held
Photograph
flashed a toothy smile to the
them carefully in his left hand
grey-haired, rugged faced man
while his right one opened
on the other side of the counter. He was tall and
the steel casing of the oven. Heat scorched his
wore a wife-beater with rusty jeans. The man
muddy brown eyes, his pores opened, and he
held the hand of a little blonde girl in a bright
carefully set the two pieces in the correct depth.
purple tutu, who smiled back at Daniel.
Too far and they would burn. Too shallow and
“Can I get uh...a double-stuffed with
they would take too long to heat. He knew
extra-cheese, an uh regular cheese? And a beer,”
from experience that customers hated waiting
he asked, his Southern accent thick. He added
long for what was supposed to be the best and
the last statement only after Daniel saw his eyes
fastest pizza in town. He took a beer from the
trail towards the cooler near the back.
cooler, being sure to grab a cold one, and set
“Sure, just a moment, sir,” Daniel punched
it down by the father, who nodded his thanks.
in the numbers while the man nodded and
Daniel knew he wasn’t technically allowed to
11
12
serve alcohol until he was twenty-one, but no
one who worked there was even over twenty,
except the owner. Daniel and Charlie, the pizza
maker for Fridays, were the only two workers in
that day.
Daniel settled behind the counter again,
leaning forward and resting his elbows on
the glass and his chin in his tan hands. His
black, curly hair fell into tendrils in front of his
eyes. He liked it—thought it made him look
like some Greek god, and it made it easier to
pretend to be somewhere else. It grew darker
outside, which Daniel knew meant it grew
closer to closing time. He didn’t like working
with pizza. He hated the food himself. He felt
like he was serving killer grease to people, and
getting paid for it, like an assassin. The grease
didn’t do much for his wallet or morals. Or
complexion. His eyes drifted down to the clippings and photographs he always daydreamed
about when business was slow. The Miami
beaches, winters in Canada, cruise ships in the
Caribbean, and local offices were always the
setting. The personal ads were his favorite. In
particular one that read “Older woman seeking playmate her own age,” with a woman about
sixty years old by it. He didn’t recognize the
name or the face, but every time he saw the
clipping, he imagined a dirty image, and would
laugh at the idea of looking for a “playmate” in a
newspaper. Jerking his head quickly up, Daniel
remembered the pizzas. He went to the oven and, using a pair of
tongs, removed the two pizzas and set them
on a plate. Just as he got around the counter,
though, he paused and remembered. Doublestuff, with extra-cheese. The double-stuff
on his plate had only regular cheese. Daniel
stopped and sighed, and turned back around.
He set the regular cheese pizza aside. Daniel
took from the condiments cabinet the shredded cheese and sprinkled a thick layer that fell
like lace over the double-stuff, and set it back
into the oven. He knew getting an order wrong
meant not only having to give the pizza away
for free, but it was also bad reputation for the
restaurant.
Italia’s restaurant was a small joint known
mostly for its old-timey atmosphere. Made of
dusty brick and washed-out curtains, old folks
loved it, and the occasional group of teenagers would also make it a regular hang out spot.
It sat on a side street of the town, where only
a few people drove. The owner didn’t have
much money, so the restaurant couldn’t afford
much advertisement. Instead the place achieved
renown through word-of-mouth. It was this
fact that always made Daniel slightly flustered,
wanting to make sure he was polite and prompt
with orders. But he had always been slightly
forgetful. The owner was nice, but would often
get impatient with him. No reputation was
better than a bad one. Daniel was, however,
talented at math, which was why he was one of
the few cashiers. Adding to the atmosphere of
the restaurant, the cash registers didn’t automatically tell how much change was owed.
“Hey, Daniel,” Charlie, the only other
employee there with Daniel that day, came
in from the back. He was much shorter than
Daniel, with reddish hair and a face crowded
with freckles. He set a newly made mushroom
pizza down.
“Oh, hey, Charlie. Thanks,” Daniel
grabbed the pizza and laid it out in the display
case. He heard Charlie begin laughing. “What’s
up?”
“Ole Donnie is back, and he’s harassing
some girl in a tutu,” he said, still chuckling. Ole
Donnie was a local homeless man who would
set up residence outside random shops and beg
outside them, like Girl Scout cookie salespeople. He was dressed in four jackets and black
track pants. His hair was twisted like a bird’s
nest, with leaves and sticks and spit mixed in.
When the owner was in he usually chased Ole
Don away, but Charlie and Daniel liked him.
They weren’t allowed to give him any food,
though, since it would show up a discrepancy in
the money and amount of pizza left.
“Anyway, we shouldn’t need anymore
pizza for the night. I’m headin’ home. See ya,
dude,” Charlie took off his cap and waved goodbye. On his way to his car, he nodded towards
Don, who raised two fingers as a response.
Charlie’s car was an old, bent up piece of scrap
metal that he thought attracted the ladies, but
Daniel knew it only attracted more rust. It sped
out of the parking lot towards the town, and
Daniel watched it, sighing. He jerked his head
again, and again remembered the pizzas.
Holding the double-stuff, now with an
obvious amount of extra cheese on the top, and
a regular cheese pizza, he walked towards the
tables, but couldn’t find the man or girl.
“Double-stuff with extra cheese, and a
regular cheese?” No one replied.
“Double-stuff with extra cheese, and a
regular cheese?” he repeated, louder, ruder. Still
no reply. Regretting having to tell the boss his
mistake the next day, he returned to the counter
and unceremoniously set the plate down with a
clang. The man could have at least said something, Daniel thought, fuming in his mind. He
watched Don ask for money from the last few
customers leaving, and picked up the pizzas and
went outside.
“Hey, Don,” Daniel said, setting the
pizzas in front of him like you would set down
food before an angry bear. Don glared at the
pizzas and then Daniel, and then grabbed the
regular cheese and bit down, hard. Daniel
smiled, and heard his own stomach growl. He
realized he was pretty hungry, too. He sat in
one of the wire chairs around the patio tables,
and leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
“I can’t pay for this,” Don said, already
halfway done with the pizza, as though the idea
suddenly came to him that Daniel hadn’t been
giving it away. He said it in a rough, slurred
voice. Daniel laughed and waved his hand, his
eyes still closed.
“It’s on the house,” he said, thinking
he’d just pay for it with his own money later.
“Man, I hate this job. Bad pay, and all it does is
give me more pimples. And the customers are
always jerks to me,” Daniel complained. “And
I’m hungry, but all there is to eat is this damn
pizza…How’ve you been, Don?”
“Like birds and bees,” Don said, taking a
quick break after the first slice. Daniel sat up,
and turned to him, confused.
“Huh?”
“Like ’squitos and dragon-flies,” Don
repeated, a smile appearing on his dirt-covered
face. “Like twinklin’ stars and cold winds,” he
said again, a bigger smile showing up. Daniel
playfully kicked him.
“What’re you talking about?”
“Like the moon,” he cracked up now, falling over, and Daniel saw the bottle next to him.
Ole Donnie was drunk. Daniel grinned and
turned his head heavenward and closed his eyes
again.
“You’re crazy, Don.”
“Maybe. But I’m homeless and don’t
complain much as you,” he said, rising slowly.
“Thanks for the food.”
Daniel watched him stumble, still
slightly drunk, across the narrow street beyond
13
Italia’s. “See ya, Don,” he yelled, and Don
threw up his arm as a crude wave. As a driver
honked his horn and yelled out his window
at Ole Donnie, Daniel couldn’t help but grin.
He stood and grabbed the tray to take it inside
and close the building, but he stopped at the
weight of the plate and noticed that Don
had only eaten one pizza, the regular cheese.
Daniel stared back through the darkness, but
Don was out of sight. Realizing Don had
left the pizza for him, Daniel set the plate
back down and sat in the wire-framed chair,
propping his feet on the table. Grabbing the
slice and taking a bite, he turned towards
the street. With the small lights of the city
twinkling with the stars, with gnats and
dragonflies and mosquitoes competing for air
space, with the cool winds whispering around
the corners of brick buildings, with the moon
casting shorter but darker shadows across
the parking lots, Daniel watched and ate in
silence.
14
The Small Things in Focus
Kate Dubickas
First Place—Photography Competition
Once Upon a Time
Once upon a time,
there was a man with a beard, a daughter, and a leather jacket.
He knew no lullabies, save “Silent Night.”
And looked vaguely like a Shar- Pei puppy.
Cigarette smoke, Cool Water and old leather made up his scent.
He could cook crab cakes and couscous, but not
macaroni and cheese.
With a storyteller’s voice,
He read to his daughter for hours every night.
A silly grown up, he taught her so much:
Literature, carpentry, music, politics, life.
Eventually, he shaved the beard,
and his daughter went away,
but he still had the leather jacket.
Elizabeth Seratt
Honorable Mention—Poetry Competition
Echo
15
Dong Song
Clayboard
We Buried Him Under a Grey Sky
That’s not black
he said, fingering the hem of my shirt.
I nodded, looked out the window of the silver Cadillac:
the green tent and wintered trees blocked grey sky, full of rain.
The seat was slick, the ground soggy;
my church shoes sank in the mud of the private plot.
Grass roots stretched across the grave, reaching for something
as Nanny took the triangle of red, white, blue.
There were no flowers
Bring me flowers when I’m alive.
No point in decoratin’ where my body’s at.
It’s not like I’m there.
Elizabeth Seratt
Lily
Joshua Lonthair
Photograph
Mississippi Soil
Cecily Carlisle
Honorable Mention—Essay Competition
“I feel like a wet seed wild in hot blind earth.” —William Faulkner
I. Growin’ Up Dumb
16
My eight-year-old legs straddled a stump.
One, two, three, four, seven—my best friend
Brittany Stepp counted my black leg hairs. I
was jealous. She had twelve of them on her own
legs and wore a halter top. Summer stinging
my eyes, I saw Bubba strutting up the stained
dirt path from home to the sweating tool shed.
Bubba was Brittany’s older brother, nineteen
and full to the brim with it. He carried a little,
withered green New Testament stuffed behind
the Black & Mild cigars in his front shirt
pocket, and like the shed, I wasn’t allowed to go
around him much.
Twisting his head to the side, Bubba slid
between the shack’s double doors, hand over
heart to protect his tobacco.
“Whadda ya think’s in there?” I breathed
to Brittany, though I already knew some of
it: I had seen Bubba carry in a poster the day
before—it was felt, with dogs dealing cards,
and Brittany told me it was for luck in his poker
games. I’d only ever learned to play King’s
Corners, so I wasn’t quite sure what she meant.
“It ain’t nothing good,” she said. “Just
some old cables and tractor parts, I think. And
a boom box. Nothin’, really.” Nothing? That
was better than Christmas! In fact, I had asked
for a boom box the year before and hadn’t
gotten one. With all of those things, we could
put on our own radio show, easy.
The shed was fantastic: all wood, like a
cabin or the secret clubhouse from my Babysitter’s Club books. Like gingerbread trimming,
pieces of tar squares hung down from the
sloped, broken roof. The shed had only one
window, stained-glass from the Corona and
Michelob bottles lining its sill, and so high up
that not even Brittany could see into it. My
favorite part was the floor; I’d never seen it, but
Brittany swore it was just dirt, ground, no wood
or carpet or anything.
Brittany rode four-wheelers and wore
short skirts. She had three boys’ phone
numbers, from what I knew, and she called
them on her own portable phone. Like
Brittany’s life, the shed was part of a whole
universe of things my mother told me to avoid.
She called it “growin’ up right,” but I called
ESP
Shelby Steelhammer
Photograph
it “growin’ up dumb.” I didn’t care for Polly
Pockets, tea sets, or teddy bears; I wanted to
know about men and dirt. I had a yearning to
see the guts of sheds and wear snakeskin boots
to school instead of my penny loafers.
Things have changed since that eightyear-old day: Brittany has a baby girl of her
own to warn, and I am hard at work, buried in
the books of academia, where I don’t see many
Brittanys. But to the horror of my mother, I
swear that the girl is still much a part of who
I am. I find traces of her every day—in the
honest dirt sticking to my fingertips after
sweeping the nests of leftover sod from my
father’s Ford, and in my own slight smile as I
apply Cover Girl’s Barely There eye shadow
before a Tuesday night movie with the girls.
Though she probably doesn’t realize it, Brittany
brought out the beauty and risk in simple sheds
and boys like Bubba. Her world has been the
fertilizer of my life since childhood.
II. Listening
I remember my father, shufflin’ up dust
from the trailer porch, and my mother, sweating out our Sunday supper to the swinging
sex of Steppenwolf. This was before men were
banished to the barn to light their pipes, when
smoke painted everything in the house that
sticky, sickly yellow, and Momma wore her best
white dress to Wal-Mart.
But what I remember best are the eggs—
we had our own set of hens plus a cock or two.
Back then, they fed me eggs with every meal,
until I got so full I had to speak. And when I
spoke, the language broke out of me and came
running, ’til I just couldn’t quit anymore. Then
came the written words.
Even without the words, though, there
were still voices—the wind licking through
my ears from the bed of our pick-up, the dumb
bumping of palms laid flat against kitchen
cabinets, even
the seething pop
of my father’s
Marlboro. These
were my friends
and my familiars,
but my mother
sought something
different. For a time, my Car in Old-Fashioned Style
world swelled and shook,
Austin Clinton
until again I found footPhotograph
ing, at seven years old.
Our new home,
discordantly silent and empty of working
women, was set off by the shimmy and shrieking of neighborhood children. Rather than
gusting up gravel, their din met the padded
pavement before settling again against our
window panes.
But even these voices weren’t enough for
17
me. I spent hours slinking and sneaking about
the house, scooting around couch corners and
skulking beneath dust ruffles, trying to catch
my mother’s words. Her voice would bubble up
to me from the living room and soap my ears
good, ’til I could find just the right hiding spot
to listen.
My mother made my mouth. I am
convinced that my lips are so small-set from
all the coffee cups she let me sip from so early.
Unlike the many other parents I’ve met, my
mother welcomed me into her bedroom, set
me up a nest at the head of her bed. In the
morning, I’d find myself there, just smelling
her—always Design, sweat, and Virginia Slims.
And in the evening, she’d sing me there with
tales from Beverly Cleary, C. S. Lewis, Jane
Austen.
In reading those words filling the pages,
I wondered who really spoke them to me, but
now I know: it is all those voices I remember, in
just the right order.
III. In Their Words
18
I can remember, my mother fed me words
with my green beans.
“You are Mummy’s little girl, my dorter,”
she would coo, spooning in soup or what-haveyou. Adding letters, it was refined, like Old
English: “dramatical,” “styupid,” and “warsh.”
But my father liked dirt and a dog’s bark
in his speaking, cutting up consonants with
staccatos.
“Crank that tractor, girl—I’m gon’ teach
you somethin’.” He’d sip his sweet tea as my
hand slipped for the engine switch. “What boy
you been seein’?” he always wanted to know. “Is
he a home boy?” A home boy, a “down home”
boy, a “right down country” boy. He never was.
The old must keep gardens on their
tongues; all of my grands and greats spoke in
terms of vegetables.
“Hit’s about time for meh squarsh.” The
words never failed to rattle out of Great Uncle
Bob.
“How ya been, Uncle Bob? How’s it been
goin’ in Pontotoc?” I’d ask.
“Hit’s been just fine, I reckon. Time for
my tomatoes; ain’t sure if they gon’ show or
not.” But I know they’re
going to show; I can
already find them springing up in the voices of my
parents. I call my mother,
and she is “just warshing
some cucumbers.”
“Been pickin’ these
kids some cantaloupe,”
huffs my father when I ask
about his summer months.
I suppose my own
tongue is still untilled
earth, uncharted territory.
I’ll probably keep a garden
as well some day, but with a little more pesticides thanks to “awll that book learnin’.”
Mirror Water
Tiffany Croft
Honorable Mention—Photography Competition
Rooftop View
Tiffany Croft
Photograph
Trapped
Miranda Shugars
She steps as she has never stepped before; within the insole of her step, echoes hide. She
contemplates the space between the arch of her foot and the dark stone beneath, her rattling breath;
recreating lost sound in silent apathy.
pat.
pat. pat. pat.
Her instep screams in protest, wrenchingly screams, silent screams silenced by the stone and
their own flesh. Her screams were not silent—no, not they, who bound freely from stone to stone, to
bar, rusty iron, to stone. They had wings, she knew. But now she has no voice.
Air flees, rattling her chest, ravaging her throat, harsh. pat. pat. she says. She recalls flight,
too, like an angel, never touch the ground. But her wings rusted through like the chain on the stone,
borne too much blood. She is not fettered; so she steps.
pat— pat— pat—
Her sole cries.
pat. pat. pat.
She replies.
Her skin creeps and writhes over knitted scars and old, old burns—burns on her wrists, her
ankles, her throat, circling like snakes; as lithely, each step flees to grace. She touches the floor as she
touches nothing—there is no progress, only the steps forward she cannot take. All of her, and her
feet scream against their false prison.
Her sole raises flurries, small whirls of dust from long-dead feathers; they brush her face and
pass secretly by. She follows them with her dead stare, as they leave behind rusty bars.
Her sole recognizes the space beyond, boundless mystery, and veers. Sleep trickles in tendrils
through the bars, clouds near her feet; behind, her rusted chains. Her sole crosses.
pat. pat. pat.
Then, one final imparted on her bare arm, pat, and there is nothing more. Her parents kneel
beside her, her doctor leaves, and she, from her white gown, flees.
Fish Out of Water
Kate Dubickas
Photograph
19
How Long?
Rachel Selph
Second Place—Essay Competition
20
Light filtered through the translucent
window, and I can’t remember if my brother
was there or not. I remember my mom, holding
me back while I shoved to reach the glass. After
all, maybe if my tiny fists could beat loudly
enough on the diaphanous wall he would turn
back around and see me. He couldn’t leave if
he saw me, right? It was always like that back
then, though, especially the separation anxieties
(I would learn that was what to call these bouts
later). Only I found it was more common for the
child to never want to leave her mom; well, in
that sense my dad was like my mother. He was
the one who stayed at home while Mom worked
endless hours of my childhood as a secretary for
some big cheese of a sports company. I loved
her, too, but never got to see her, except in the
mornings and at night. At least Dad was home
most of the time—well, most of the time.
“How long?” I would ask, biting my
lips and scowling at the floor; it was a look as
unfit as a grin on an owl. He would glance at
me, play around on the frets and strings while
tuning the gleaming bass in his fingers. I’m
sure he could hear me, or mostly sure. Maybe
the music he played really was too loud for my
voice to reach him, or all the years of rockconcert speakers had damaged his ears. I’d like
to think the latter, because I always had to ask
again.
“How long this time?”
He would carefully set the bass guitar
in its case and with a click sit back up. “Don’t
worry, Chickie Pea, it’s just a gig. I’ll be back
sooner than you notice I’m gone.”
It wasn’t a clear answer; they never
thought to explain to a five-year-old what was
really going on. Five-year-olds weren’t old
enough to listen and know yet.
“Where are you going?”
The Solitude of Contemplation
Adam Stanford
Photograph
“I’m playing with the band tonight.”
“No!” I would clench my fists and bite at
my lip till it felt raw and tender. “When are you
coming home?”
Here he would pause, but I never remembered the answer. The nights of gigs and then
months on tour carefully bled together so that
anytime he left the house with his bass in tow
I was afraid. Maybe he would be back in the
morning; maybe not. They never tell the kids.
So we listen carefully. Parents’ Day at school
would come, and he would be there with Mom.
“And what does your dad do?”
“Oh, he plays in a rock band…”
“COOL!”
“What about yours?”
“He works at home on the computer…”
Each of us could hear the envy layered thick
like syrup in the others’ voice, neither understanding why the other could feel that way.
Then next day—
Laugh…
… Smile,
Pat on the head,
suitcase and…
Bass.
“Love you, Chickie Pea… ,
I’m… leaving… for…
Will be back… soon….”
“How long, Daddy? How long?”
“Soon, Chickie Pea, real soon.”
“A month? A week? A day?”
“Just playing a gig, sweetie.”
“But how long?”
Lovely Ladybug
A ladybug rests upon a leaf
I wonder what she is thinking
Her red orange shell contrasts
Against the bright green leaf
Covered in morning dew
I count the black spots on her body
One, two, three, four, five, six
I wonder what she is dreaming of
Maybe of peace
Maybe of love or happiness
She spreads her wings
To fly away
Towards the rising sun
Orange, yellow, and pink
Maybe, just maybe
Her dreams will come true
Golden Life
Sweta Desai
Oil
Third Place, Painting—Art Competition
Tiffany Harris
Paradise
Sweta Desai
Acrylic
21
Hummingbird
flickers outside my window
curls his tongue and
steals my sugar water.
His head and back are swaying grass,
his throat and stomach blazing Autumn trees
against his ashy beak;
he hovers
and wrinkles the air
as his wings whir like heat waves.
He comes and goes
as the season withers and sucks
the colour from the weeds
and floating seeds
and ivy wreaths.
22
A Burst of Sunshine
Joshua Lonthair
Photograph
A Thousand Cranes
they were folded with haste
I read desperation in the creases
But he leaves vivid trails
and steals my sugar water;
and I keep the feeder full
throughout fall.
apologies scribbled on flimsy wings
vivid colors ruined by your silver words
you cannot buy forgiveness
Miranda Shugars
Boram Lee
18th Avenue, Meridian
Ginny Kramer
Photograph
Cotton
Her hands are suited for
dropping chicken in
steamy grease that
pop-cracks against
her blistered skin,
Skin aged in the sun
When her fingers
Snap off tender shoots,
Wrench roots from ground and
Win splinters from shovels,
Shovels she drags out
in bitter winter months
against slicing winds
to hoard snow into
piles of white,
White like the fields of
Bursting cotton where
she used to weave garlands
of emerald silk for her
cotton-colored hair.
Southern Farm
Tiffany Croft
Photograph
23
Tiffany Croft
Second Place—Poetry Competition
A Taste of Mississippi
Aisha Lyons
Watercolor
Second Place, Painting—Art Competition
Mississippi Queen
Kalina Deng
Clayboard
First Place, Drawing—Art Competition
Kitchen Window
Sunday Morning
Elizabeth Seratt
Photograph
the sunlight shines the dust to gold
crashes in like an avalanche
traces the lines of your once-soft hands
but your eyes never leave the windowsill
I cannot imagine,
aspiring composer, how you felt
as you left the baton on the stand
you could have performed
at Carnegie Hall
as a mother, your pianist fingers
casually flick off soapy residue
when you could have instead
continued the birth of song
24
Boram Lee
Third Place—Poetry Competition
The Waitress
She slips feet
fit for dancing
into server’s shoes.
Her tender toes
tamp as
she skitters from
table to kitchen
with plates amidst
the symphony of
shattered dish
and din of dying
song.
Simplicity
Casey Dickson
Acrylic
Honorable Mention, Painting—Art Competition
Her dishpan hands
clutch crimped napkins
like roses thrown
on stage.
Tiffany Croft
Hide and Seek
Ginny Kramer
Photograph
almond branches in
bloom
When I see
almond branches in bloom
I think of my sister—
her broken apartment in
New Orleans—broken city—
her one poor, shabby room,
at the top of a narrow wooden stairwell that
peels like bark,
her room that always smells of fish
and ramen—
Green twists scars and blooms
white hands
against blue skies reflecting brown eyes—
one of the
posters that fall like leaves from her wall—
When I see
almond branches in bloom
I remember those three months without her;
I still went to class—every day
of seventh grade blurred—
while she missed those three months of tenth.
We talked on the telephone
my hasty breaths and shakes
subsided with her nonchalance—
it was all a mistake—
And when we sit together beneath
live oaks
we watch trolleys clang up St. Charles,
tourists yell and brandish
masks—
the sunlight brushes her bare arms
where scars twist like branches
and my white hands upon hers
like blooms—
Miranda Shugars
Sun-kissed Snow
Adam Stanford
Photograph
25
Fly.
while I sit here in this metal spiral stairwell,
she stares at the tiny slit of light
through which my smoke escapes
as delicate as a white, translucent moth
up here all concrete and steel and cold
she doesn’t mind the god-awful smell
sticking to the wet concrete like saturated honey
and to me, really, that’s all that matters
but I know she’s only asking one question
she sits there staring, asking, pleading, silent
and I gaze back at her strange black eyes, silent
I answer the only answer I can give
the sound bounces like pearls off
confiding and confining concrete walls
26
and opaque eyes only dulled again and she turned away
leaning against age-old concrete graffiti-ed
with cliché confessions and colorful profanity
but still pale and unfurnished like an invalid’s room
I stood and crushed the fire, waving away the smoke
Edge of Reason
Kalina Deng
Paper collage
First Place, Painting—
Art Competition
as I climbed up the stairwell to the rooftop one day,
my eyes widened as a I saw a flutter of white
and she flew, falling, flickering over the side
her hair caught the sunlight and I looked away
towards the sun and further from endings
but God,
it was beautiful
Boram Lee
Honorable Mention—Poetry Competition
End of the Day
Joshua Lonthair
Photograph
Off of Route 22
I never took Lennon as a diner man;
there he sat, cigarette in one hand,
pen in the other—scribbling notes on
the pock-marked countertop.
“Gonna write another hit,” he told me.
We sat in the shack off of Route 22 among
women with burgundy lipstick and
too-blue eye shadow trailing down their faces
And the men who watched those women with
glassy gainsboro eyes.
John ordered plate after plate—
stacks of butter-bathed pancakes and
flaking biscuits that crumbled at the touch.
You can afford to be unhealthy when you’re dead
and a Beatle, I suppose.
“Shea Stadium—I was on top of the world.”
He mourned for VW Bugs and burlap.
“Does anyone remember?”
Yes, I told him, after a swig of cold coffee,
we still listen.
Tiffany Croft
Honorable Mention—Poetry Competition
Meridian Underground
Ginny Kramer
Photograph
27
Hilton
Boram Lee
Photograph
Sounds
Miranda Shugars
Third Place—Essay Competition
28
My dad always said, “Write about what
you know.” My sister and I grew up dancing to
this mantra, our bare feet slapping the kitchen’s
linoleum in the summer and swinging to Billie
Holiday and Miles Davis in the winter, slipping
in our socks in time to his golden rule and two
great loves: music and composition.
In the center of our half of the duplex at
601 Park Avenue, Lafayette, Indiana, stretched
a wooden floor. My dad called it our Dancing
Room. There he kept his vast stereo system,
record player tape player and CD player sandwiched between twin monolithic speakers,
which now sits in the corner of his office
beneath an inch of dust. But in the Dancing
Room he kept it playing his lively blend of jazz
and swing, punk, alternative, classical, and
country and spun my sister and me in circles.
Music
Sweta Desai
Acrylic
In the winter the room was filled with
warmth, and light cast through the numerous
windows by snow banks and swirling flakes,
and sound—the low rumble of the heater, the
sweet chords of my mother’s violin, amplified
by the high ceiling and wooden walls, or the
seasonal Frank Sinatra—or the radio. I remember tracing intricate veins of frost through icy
window panes and listening to “A Prairie Home
Companion” with my sister on Saturday mornings as the scent of sizzling pancakes drifted in
from the kitchen.
“A Prairie Home Companion” is the
first radio program I actively listened to. The
delightful adventures of Guy Noir, Private Eye,
and The Lives of the Cowboys captivated me,
and I always anticipated Garrison Keillor’s news
from Lake Wobegone, where “all the women
are strong, all the men are good-looking, and
all the children are above average.” The sound
effects man, Tom Keith, who amplified Keillor’s
stories with astoundingly accurate sounds, often
creating the illusion that there was actually a
can of whipped cream, an elephant, or even a
Firebird with them in the studio, was my favorite. His exotic sounds lent the radio life.
Even before Prairie Home I heard—
though comprehensive listening didn’t come
until later—the news. My dad kept at least one
radio in the house tuned to NPR at all times.
When I started kindergarten, I could already
recognize NPR’s shows by their theme songs.
In my dorm room, I listen to the news
before school every morning, when the seven
o’clock “Morning Edition” music transports me
through middle school, grade school, back to
chilly September when my first year began—
when I woke up every day to the music, ate
breakfast to it five mornings a week. Sometimes
I arrived in the kitchen a bit later, in time for
the stock market announcement, when the
song was always “We’re in the Money,” and the
voice-over reported that the Dow had shot up
again.
As I aged I learned to recognize voices,
too: Terri Gross, who has always been my favorite NPR reporter, Robert Siegal and Melissa
Block, Neal Conan, and the distinctive hesitation of Diane Rehm. Before I cared about the
news updates, I listened to “This American
Life,” short, autobiographical essays, almost
always brilliant, presented by their writers.
My dad’s mantra always returned to me when
I heard this program: “Write about what you
know.”
Winter Mockingbird
Jane Girard
29
Scratchboard
Sedentary
On riverbanks, graphic girls unlace,
and river rats swell with sullen snakes.
My grandmother says,
“It’s something in the water.”
But the girls,
They drink from the same bell jars
that dusted my own mother’s tongue,
at a sweating seventeen—
Match Point
That spread across the stained sheets
of her second year
married,
Barren.
Dong Song
Stipple in ink
Third Place, Drawing—Art Competition
Cecily Carlisle
Lifeguard on Duty
Thompson Segars
First Place—Short Story Competition
The Chris Read Award for Fiction
30
I’ve only had one paying job in my
entire life, if you could even call it a job. I
was hired by a woman in my neighborhood
to lifeguard for her son’s birthday party at the
swimming pool at Lake Lurleen State Park.
The party was two hours long. I had a job for
two hours.
Lake Lurleen is a state park northwest
of Tuscaloosa. The park is full of evergreen
trees, rolling hills, it has many campsites,
and it is located next to Lake Lurleen. Lake
Lurleen is the main attraction of the park, and
for reasons unbeknownst to me, the park has a
swimming pool. I shouldn’t question it, though.
It got me a job after all. For two hours.
I drove through the winding county
roads that were in such a state of disrepair you
wouldn’t think that their ultimate destination
was a state park. The entrance to the park is
marked by a security shack in the middle of the
street and a small little creek that runs across
the street in front of the shack. I drove over the
creek and stopped by the dingy little building.
The windows were grimy with years of natural,
green crud that looked like an algae-covered
rock, but I could still see that there was no one
inside. There wasn’t even a gate, just a little box
on top of a post that had a hole in the top of it.
Written on the side of the box was “HONOR
BOX.” I scoffed at the idea of people actually
stopping to put their hard-earned money in
the box to enjoy a public park. No one was that
full of the “milk of human kindness.” To prove
my assumption, I drove into the park without
paying. I shook off a feeling of guilt that was
creeping upon me from the back of my mind
as I navigated by the signs that pointed to the
pool. The twisted roads cut into the forests like
a snake slithering through the water. The trees
broke over the opposite side of the road momentarily and I saw a vast lake, shimmering in the
afternoon sun. I could see people swimming,
people fishing, people in campsites, people boating, people skiing, and people just enjoying the
outdoors. Once again, I was perplexed as to
why the park officials decided to spend money
on a pool. I continued to follow the signs until
I ended up in the parking lot to the pool. No
Endless Daisies
Erin Rauenhorst
Acrylic
Honorable Mention, Painting—
Art Competition
one else was there. I decided to get everything
straightened out and situated while I waited.
The swimming pool was enclosed in a heavy,
metal fence. The entrance was actually a small
building that housed the bathrooms and changing rooms. The building was shaped somewhat
like a boxy “n.” The two legs of the “n” were the
changing rooms and bathrooms, and the hole
through the middle was the entrance to the pool.
All of this was under one roof. I walked through
the middle of the giant “n,” and I checked out
the pool—actually two pools: a little kiddy pool
that was no more than one foot deep and the
big kids’ pool that was shaped like a kidney with
crystal blue water inside and was five feet deep
at its deepest. “Five feet?” I asked to no one in
particular. “That’s it?” I jumped when a park
ranger that I hadn’t noticed standing back by the
“n” responded to my aimless inquiry.
“Yeah, I don’t even know why they have
a pool here. I mean, they could have at least
made it a decent pool, you know?” he said with
a sneer quivering on his upper lip. His uniform
was all khakis and greens and his appearance
was what could only be described as normal.
He looked like the poster boy for the “Average
Joe American.” I wondered if he had a normal
name and a normal wife and a normal house
with normal kids.
“Oh, hi, I’m here for the Robinsons’
birthday pool party,” I said. He gave me a quizzical look after I said this, which made me
give him one back. Realization dawned on me
soon enough. “I’m the lifeguard,” I added. His
normal face quickly cleared.
“I thought you looked a little old to be
playin’ with the age group that’s supposed to be
here. The name’s John,” he said. I knew it.
“Thomas,” I replied. We shook hands.
“Do you have any credentials?” he
asked. I pulled out my lifeguard certificate
and handed it to him. He had a wedding ring
on. I wondered what his normal wife’s name
was. “Ok, looks good,” he said. There was an
awkward silence as I looked around once more.
The lifeguard chair was just a plastic chair
sitting at the kidney’s indention. Sunbathing
chairs were scattered all around the edge next to
the fence, and the poles that were used to clean
the pool were on the far side by the kiddy pool
where they were attached to the fence.
“Is there any kind of lifeguard equipment
around here?” I asked.
“Well, uh, we got those poles you use to
get leaves out of the pool,” he replied. “I guess
you could use one of those to fish the kids out
from the bottom.” He chuckled when he said
that. I just smiled a fake smile. Fishing kids out
was not something I wanted to think about. I
thanked normal John then went to the changing rooms to change.
The Robinsons arrived shortly afterwards.
Mrs. Robinson is one of those middle-aged
women that thinks she’s still got it. She’s a
round woman, but she’s not overweight. She has
a round face with beady eyes all under a mane
of dyed strawberry blonde hair. She always
makes me uncomfortable.
“Hello, Thomas. Thanks for coming,”
she said. A smirk curled up one side of her
mouth. She looked me up and down, and I felt
exposed and uncomfortable. Especially since
standard lifeguard uniform required me to have
my shirt off.
“Oh, it’s no problem, Mrs. Robinson,” I
replied. “Is this everyone?”
“No, there are more kids coming,” she
said. Little Billy Robinson poked his fiery head
out from behind his mother’s legs to look at
me. He didn’t look anything like his mother.
Freckles dotted his small, gaunt face. His
bright, green eyes rested on top of his perky
nose. He was a scrawny little kid. Scrawnier
than average it seemed. Something about him
just seemed so weak and pitiful.
“Alright, well, I’ll be in that chair if you
31
32
deep to the shallow end. Every once in a while
need me,” I said. I wanted to get away from
he and his friends would have a competition to
her as soon as possible. I could feel her eyes
see who could swim the farthest underwater. He
burrowing into me as I walked away. More and
always lost. “Hey, kid, go get me a Capri-Sun
more kids started to show up, and they would
please,” I said to the blonde kid I had caught
swim while their parents congregated around
running earlier. He was sipping on a Capri-Sun
the sunbathing chairs for conversation. Their
and quickly obliged by running to the cooler
conversation filtered in and out between the
to get a pouch for me. “No running!” I yelled
screams and cries of the children. Apparently,
again. He swiftly walked back with my drink in
one of the parents was a swimming instructor.
his outstretched hand. I thanked him and sent
I heard a tidbit of their conversation as I was
him on his way. The power felt good to tell you
sitting in my plastic chair.
the truth. I felt like a little tyrant in my kidney“Well, see, black people are just made
shaped dominion. I let my loyal subjects play
differently,” she said. “They don’t float as well
but not too hard. “I can’t let this power go to my
because they’re more dense.” I heard murmurs
head,” I told myself. “These are a bunch of third
of agreement amongst the parents. I was
graders, after all.”
completely dumbfounded; the level of stupidLittle Billy Robinson was seeing how long
ity that was expressed in that single statement
he could swim underwater again. He went all
flabbergasted me. I shook off my disbelief and
the way from the shalcontinued counting and
low end to the deep
recounting the kids in
“I
felt
like
a
little
tyrant
in
my
end in one breath. He
and out of the pool.
came up sputtering
Since this was my
kidney-shaped
dominion.”
and coughing, and for
first job as a lifeguard,
some reason he decided
I was as nervous as a
it would be wise to go back to the shallow end
mouse trying to steal the cheese. Kids were
instead of grabbing on to the edge of the deep
jumping into the pool, splashing each other,
end. His arms and legs flailed and struggled in
and stopping my heart every time they dunked
a haphazard doggy paddle. There was no cooreach other. I couldn’t say anything to the kids,
dination to his movements. Limbs were kicked
though. It was a birthday party, after all; I
and punched out in all directions. He was
didn’t want to interfere with their fun. I was
slowly progressing forward and making himself
just there in case of an emergency. I still exermore exhausted every second. Scenes from
cised my authority a little bit, though.
lifeguard training a month earlier were flash“No running!” I yelled at a skinny little
ing on the screen in my mind. I had only been
blonde kid. He looked at his feet, ashamed, but
trained in a lake. I realized that I had no idea
he continued to walk nearly as fast as he had
what to do in a pool. Was Billy going to be an
been running. Then, some of the kids in the
active or passive drowning victim? Should I use
pool decided it would be fun to antagonize me.
the cross shoulder carry or just wade out and
They played games like “splash the lifeguard”
grab him? “The concepts are the same,” I told
and “ask the lifeguard hundreds of questions
myself. “Besides, it’s only five feet deep. I could
that he couldn’t possibly answer.” I didn’t let it
wade out there and pick him up.” Tension and
bother me, though. I played along as I watched
apprehension gripped the inside of my stomach
the rest of the kids, especially Billy. He had
and twisted it into knots. “C’mon Billy, you can
been swimming lazily back and forth from the
[
]
make it,” I said in a barely audible but urgent
whisper. Billy’s plight finally got him back to
the shallow end. He took those first awkward
slippery steps on the floor of the pool while
tilting his head up to keep his nose out of the
water, and at that moment, all of the knots in
my stomach were untied.
The adults kept to themselves mostly.
Every once and a while, Mrs. Robinson asked
me if I needed anything while putting her
hand on my shoulder. Her cold clammy hands
touched my unclothed shoulder and sent chills
down my spine. I felt my shoulder going numb
as I tried to edge to the opposite side of my
plastic throne away from her. Eventually, I
heard some of the adults talking about prior
engagements and what not, and people began to
filter out of the pool.
“Before anyone else leaves let’s all thank
our handsome lifeguard!” Mrs. Robinson
announced this to everyone left at the pool. She
looked at me with that same smirk on the side
of her mouth that she had earlier, and all the
uncomfortable feelings I had before resurfaced.
I got handshakes from fathers and pats on the
back from mothers as they left.
“So how much do I owe you?” asked Mrs.
Robinson.
“Well, the usual fee is around twenty-five
dollars per hour,” I responded. I just wanted
her to pay me so I could leave. She wrote me a
check, and put it in my hand.
“Thanks again, Thomas,” she said.
“Thank you, Mrs. Robinson,” I replied.
The check felt heavy in my hand as I walked
away. I had earned that money. It was the first
sum of money that I actually had to work for. I
never thought working as a lifeguard would be
that hard. My nerves were shot and my hands
were shaking as I got into my car. I felt like I
had just been babysitting for twenty kids that I
had to take to the pool.
The Chris Read Award For Fiction
The Chris Read Award for Fiction, instituted with the 1994 issue of Southern Voices, honors
a member of the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science’s Class of 1991. Christopher
David Read was an active leader at MSMS as a member of Emissaries, the Debate Club, and the
Southern Voices staff. Chris’s first love, however, was writing. Southern style.
Chris often wove his Southern tales late at night. Chris would compose either on the
computer or on (his favorite) the old, brown Royal typewriter he had bought from the pawn shop
down 13th Street South. Faking sleep, I would watch the grin on Chris’s face as he worked out
the next great story. When he finished, Chris would always “wake me” and excitedly read his new
story to me. He never knew that I had been hiding, watching his creative process with admiration.
I was not the only one to admire Chris’s work. This award stands as testimony to the admiration
that we all held for Chris and his work and as a memorial to the Southern writing tradition which
Chris loved.
Chris had the potential to become a great writer. Unfortunately, Chris never reached this
potential: he was killed in a car wreck on January 17, 1993. Though Chris will never attain his
dream of writing a great novel, all of those who loved and respected Chris hope that the recipient
of this Award, as well as all the other aspiring writers at MSMS, will achieve their dreams.
Michael D. Goggans Class of 1991
33
She Told Me to Write About My Memories
Perhaps I am a monster
Who swallowed up such things
As memories
To leave more space
For the dark to seep in.
Robert Cook
Nowhere
Lawson King
Honorable Mention,
Drawing—
Art Competition
Charcoal
December
Alex Wang
34
Oil on canvas
Honorable Mention, Painting—
Art Competition
The Tree in My Front
Yard Is Normal
Tree
Aisha Lyons
Acrylic
Unless you count
That one time
He uprooted himself
And chased the mailman
Down the block
While lobbing apples at his head,
His purple leaves
And blood-red bark
Flaking after him
As he ran
Robert Cook
Our Mud Pile
Dashing across the sun-beat pavement
Hopping over every hot rock, too
Nature’s Love
Kate Dubickas
My brother, my sister, and I made our way
To the cooled grass under the pine trees
There beneath the drooping limbs
Photograph
Surrounded by grass was our dirt pile
A few buckets of water would make it good enough to be a mud bath
Two buckets of water would make it good enough to be warrior make-up
One bucket of water would make it good enough to be cupcakes
One cup of water would make it good enough to be a pie
And just a spit of water on the skin
With dirt sprinkled on top
Would make our dirt pile good enough for mud tattoos
Pauline Dyer
Pinball
Shelby Steelhammer
Honorable Mention—Photography Competition
35
Waiting
Tiffany Croft
36
Ava slid her beaten feet into the black
leather shoes, careful not to touch the growing
blisters. Blisters from years of dancing in paperthin ballet slippers that permanently curled her
tender toes. Blisters from walking across the
large college campus, fighting snow and the
whistles of construction workers who had been
building the new gym for ages. Somehow, those
men found beauty in her too-skinny body, skin
like fresh snow, and shattered, calloused, blistered feet. Mostly, the blisters were from busing
tables from five to twelve every night.
She spent hours following the same
routine: take order… give to cook… fill drink…
deliver food… clean table… hope for a nice
tip… clock out… go back to school… study.
She would stay up at night until her eyes danced
with equations and burger orders.
This time of the year was always the
hardest. Her senior recital hung over her head
like the low fluorescent lighting in Rick’s Diner
where she worked. Dancing was the one thing
she could always count on. And now, it was
the thing she missed the most. Her only time
for rehearsing was between school and work.
She missed the smell of the pine cleaner they
used on the ballet-hall floor. And the panels of
mirror after mirror that created a million of her,
all of her allegro jumps and arabesque stances
shining back at her.
Now, Ava swished a wet rag across the
table in front of her, scooping up the change
in her free hand. Change that would pay for
meager meals and chalk for her feet. Like her
mother used to say—if there’s anything more
expensive than school, it’s dancing.
“Hey, Ava, you wanna hang out after
work?” asked Debbi. In her mid-twenties,
Debbi worked twelve hours a day to put her
little girl through pre-school. She always asked
the same thing. And Ava always answered the
same way.
“Not tonight, Deb. Got school in the
morning.”
~
At practices for the recital, Ava stood on
her toes for a few seconds and then grew tired
thinking of the long night that lay ahead. A
night of children standing on tables and calculus problems with no end.
Tonight was a particularly brutal night.
Ava missed the beginning of the music three
times, each time she had been lost in her own
world. A world where she didn’t have to think
about what came later that night. Rowdy children standing on diner tables. Parents who blew
smoke in each other’s faces because smoke was easier
than words. And the spills she would have to
clean up.
Ava tried to smile despite those thoughts
but she couldn’t make her mouth form the
movement. Smiles were reserved for when she
pirouetted without losing balance and stood
on her toes for more than a minute. And that
didn’t happen much anymore.
“Hey, Ava, you look tired. You need a
break?” asked her dancing partner, Mikhail.
Mikhail was over six feet tall with the chiseled
face of Caesar and the muscles to hold himself
on tip-toe while lifting her also.
Yes, she was tired. Tired enough for her
eyelids to feel like lead that wouldn’t budge no
matter how hard she tried. Her legs didn’t feel
much different. But she had to keep moving.
Had to keep dancing. It was the only way to
keep the idea of a recital alive. And that was the
only thing that kept her going.
A few twirls and pirouettes later, Ava
was close to breaking. She leapt, desperate for
Mikhail to catch her in steel-arms. But she fell
short, landing gracefully on the wooden floor of
the ballet studio, the sound of her misstep echoing throughout the mirrored room.
Mikhail was not there to catch her.
Instead, she received the shake of a head from
her instructor, Mrs. Greith. And those eyes.
Those eyes that told her there was no use in
trying. There would be no recital. Not this year.
And this year was her last chance.
~
School was harder now. She saw dancing in everything. In the leaves that bounded
in waves across the campus. In the groups of
students arranged so sporadically. In the folds
of books and the hard lines of shapes, the soft
edges of numbers. It was all art, really.
Sometimes, while walking, Ava would
pass Mikhail going across the Quad. Or catch
his eye for a split-second while sitting in the
cafeteria. Mikhail… her dance partner for
almost four years. Her friend. The one person
who always cheered her on. Even when they
were sophomores and she had considered quitting ballet because some junior with sea-green
eyes broke her heart. Now, she barely remembered that junior’s name. She could remember
how Mikhail hadn’t laughed when she started
crying in the middle of rehearsals. How he had
pulled her to the side and asked her if she was
okay. Then, they had spent the whole night
watching I Love Lucy reruns.
But where had he been this time? This
time when the misstep was on her part.
~
Rose
That night, Ava skittered
from table to table the best she
Sweta Desai
could, dancing across the paper- Acrylic
littered floor, wishing more than
anything that she was on the
stage. That Mikhail was holding her high above
his head with his sturdy arms. That the audience would cheer her success and throw roses
on the polished stage.
But no.
Her stage was here, in Rick’s Diner. The
customers, her audience, who only cheered at
the slip of dishes onto the paneled floor. Or
clapped when she tripped over her own marble
feet.
And her roses—crumpled napkins—withered in her dishpan hands.
Ava bused table after table, thinking
of how now, Mikhail was probably catching
another girl. A girl who didn’t have to work
hard. A girl with softer skin and pretty feet.
Ava let her tears fall into the dishrag in her
hand, polishing the table beneath. Then, the
anger hit her… anger at herself for missing that
step. That one lapse that had cost her dancing.
Ava tossed the rag onto the floor, not
caring that Debbi stared at her with wide eyes
and that the manager, Rick himself, was writing notes in a pocket-sized notebook.
She glanced around the diner for something sturdy to focus on. Something that would
keep her from falling or from walking out
37
38
entirely. Then, there, in the corner. Mikhail sat,
his lean-muscled body looking awkward among
the diner crowd. He smiled his half-smile and
waved slightly. Ava bent down to pick up the
tossed rag, sure that her dancer’s grace would
keep her balanced.
Instead, she tumbled forward, her hands
slapping painfully on the floor. A chorus of
cheers and applause sounded around her. She
wouldn’t cry. Not again. But, the tears came
quick and easy, sliding down her face in wet
trails. Ava knew she couldn’t get up. Couldn’t
face the people who reveled in her embarrassment. Couldn’t live without the sound of
queued music or the feel of the stage lights.
Then, warm hands gripped her own and
pulled her from the diner floor, away from the
dirty dishrag and tears.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” said Ava to
Mikhail without looking up. She knew the feel
of his hands.
“I guess we’ve both been busy,” he replied
in his slightly accented voice.
Ava glanced once around the diner. The
diner where she now spent most of her time
cleaning up after other people. The diner that
had taken dancing away from her.
Bending low, Mikhail whispered in her
ear, “Do you want to get out of here?”
Ava nodded without thinking. Work
could wait. School could wait.
She removed her nametag, tossed it on
top of the counter, and grabbed her coat from
the rack. “Hey, Rick, I’m taking a break,” she
said over her shoulder, as Mikhail took her
hand.
He held the door open for her and they
stepped into the cool night air—a perfect night
for dancing.
Piano
Stephen Smith
Acrylic on wood
I Do Believe in Fairies
Marie Rowland
I do!
I
I do! I do!
do!
I do! I do!
be
I Believe
live
In love
Faeries!
laugh!
Anything is Possible!
Imagine! Create! Live!
You can find Magic!
Magic in
The Harsh
Realities
Of this Life
And all of the
People who Live
Here on this Earth
I~~Faith
Do!~~Trust
And
Pixie
Dust! Magic
In all
That
May
Seem
Hope Less
Or Lost!
So just
Believe in them!
I do!
Breaking Bricks
Marie Rowland
back to my original spot. I grabbed the broken
T.J.’s small hands gripped the sledge
brick, humming the end to the Shania Twain
hammer and held it tightly to his chest and
song, and moved the brick to a pile we had
stomach as he struggled with its weight. He
made. As I grabbed a whole brick, the station
carried the hammer towards me and then
inside started playing “Let’s Go to Vegas,” but I
put all of his strength into lifting it over his
didn’t dance this time. I hummed it quietly, and
head. Before he had complete control over the
laid the brick on the cool concrete and pointed
hammer, it came crashing down. As the brick
to the center of the brick. The brick was rough
broke in two, the carport echoed the sound
against my smooth left index finger.
back to us.
“When I say okay, hit it right here,” I said,
As we listened to the echoes die out, I
“Okay?”
heard the music that was coming from inside
The sledge hammer came down before I
the house.
even noticed he had raised it up. It came down
“Any man of mine better be proud of
so fast that I didn’t have time to move my finger
me. / Even when I’m ugly, he still better love
and he hit exactly where I had pointed out to
me,” Shania Twain sang out on the radio. I
him.
jumped up, and T.J. stopped picking up the
“AHHHHHHHHH!” I screamed as I
pieces to see what I was doing. As I began to
jerked my finger back and held it protectively
spin like a ballerina and sing out loud to “Any
to my chest. The pain
Man of Mine,” my
moved from my finger,
favorite sky-blue dress
“…I
began
to
spin
like
a
and my whole arm was
swirled out around me.
shaking as I moved
My feet spun me out
ballerina and sing out loud
away from T.J.
into the sunlight and
Mama came tearthe rocks in the gravel
ing out of the door
driveway dug into my
to ‘Any Man of Mine’…”
to the house with her
bare feet, but my mind
cleaning clothes on, and
was on the song.
I could still hear the music inside.
“Come on, Cissy!” T.J. yelled from the
“Hey, baby, let’s go to Vegas. / Bet on
carport. I stopped to look back at my home. It
love and let it ride.” Faith Hill’s voice was being
was a small white house pushed back into some
drowned out with the yelling, though, and I
woods, but not far. The neighborhood around
couldn’t hear anymore.
us wasn’t the best, but the boys on the street
“Mama, help Cis!” T.J. screamed, even
and my brother were good friends, so I would
louder than I was. “Will she be alright, Mama?
have fun climbing trees and playing games.
Will Cissy be okay? I didn’t mean to hurt her!”
“I’m a-coming!” I sang out as I skipped
Tears were streaming down his face as Mama
back into the shade of the carport and dropped
[
]
39
[
]
“I’m alright, T,” I
came over to me and asked
said and patted his shoulwhat was wrong.
“ ‘The only reason I
der. “It don’t hurt no
The only sounds
more.”
that left my mouth were
cried so much was
T.J. continued crying
sobs and blubbers about
the pain and what had
because I didn’t want to the whole way to the
Eudora Fire Department,
happened. T.J. ended up
where we met my dad, and
explaining to her what had
get
in
trouble.’
”
I rode in an ambulance
happened, and Mama spun
for the first time to the
around and ran into the
hospital with him. I don’t remember much past
house. She reemerged quickly with two Popsicle
that, but my family still picks on my brother
sticks and tape. As she doctored my finger,
about crying more than I did. He says, “The
I stopped crying and tried to console my big
only reason I cried so much was because I didn’t
brother.
want to get in trouble.”
40
Airplane
The giant squares of land
Form a jigsaw puzzle
With streams and rivers snaking
Their way between each piece
The cotton candy clouds float
Aimlessly around the aircraft
The ground is anti-magnified
Making the window a
Microscope slide of the world
Clayton Jacobs
Seas of Couds
Joshua Lonthair
Photograph
The Real Bible Belt Culture
Mud Bogs and permanent Christmas lights,
Huntin’ hogs and Budweiser-filled nights
Pick-up trucks with Rebel flag plates,
Jim Bob sayin’ anything that’s different, he hates
Bleach-blonde mullet with a sleeveless Skynyrd shirt,
Mary Sue sayin’ math makes her head hurt
Cowboy hats with Wrangler jeans,
Sammy Joe don’t really care what first cousin means
Shootin’ stray cats,
Bashing mailboxes with baseball bats
Billy Ray’s favorite thing to beat up in life
Until he meets his future ex-wife
Parker Lundy
Speakin’ of People and Places
Sometimes the words just sigh out of me
when I lick the pen top.
The same words that get up under the dog’s nails,
and go clickin’ through my daddy’s trailer,
Those words that cunned up Gramma Carlisle’s cock—
the one that couldn’t stop peckin’ my momma’s head
that time he got after her.
And other times I just coast by and
let my arm hairs do the talkin’.
But when I really got something to say,
By God, I cannot stop it.
Like when smells of my father’s Cordova roofing job
come to me,
When I just can’t kick that Askew,
Lake View gravel outta my shoes.
Dr. House
Stephen Smith
Graphite
Honorable Mention, Drawing—
Art Competition
So then I really speak it and
whether it be volumes or some
Lack-luster line of verse,
It’s somethin’.
And by God, I gotta speak it.
Cecily Carlisle
41
Job
Elizabeth Seratt
Third Place—Short Story Competition
42
from the radio as he pulled off Highway 18
Pink tinged the grey sky while the sun
onto Main Street, past First Baptist, St. John’s
stretched itself into the sky. Gravel grated the
Episcopal, and Our Lady of the Lake Catholic
tires of the old Cadillac as Job stared out the
churches. He turned onto Lakeshore at the
window. He didn’t need to pay attention to the
old oak tree in Chicot Park, where his sister
road; he had driven this path every day at this
broke her arm all those years ago. Three drivesame time of day for twelve years. He knew that
ways, alley, vacant lot, and
when the hole in the tree
he turned; the two-story
in Bobby’s field came into
sagging house with peeling
view, it was time to give in
paint was the same as it had
to the snaking incline up
been yesterday, but only a
the levee, and that, when
shadow of what it had been
he heard Mrs. Jett’s cows,
in his youth.
he needed to move just a
Job turned the
little faster, because one
Cadillac off and sat in the
of them always thought
silent cold of February
that his Cadillac was hers,
morning. He glanced in the
and that, when he came
rearview mirror: his dark
over that last cattle gap,
hair, still damp from his
he would want, more than
shower, fell just above his
anything, to return to the
deep blue eyes. Wrinkles
solitude of his farm that ran
from worry and laughfrom the Arkansas levee
ter lined his face. With a
clear to the lake by which
sigh, he slid to the door,
his ranch-style home sat.
stepped out, slammed the
But, no matter how much
Behold
a
White
Horse
door and walked through
Job wanted to turn back, he
the unlocked back door; it
couldn’t; he had responsibilMarie Rowland
slammed behind him.
ities to a woman in a white
Clayboard
“That you, Job?”
house on Lakeshore Drive.
Honorable
Mention,
Drawing—
came a cigarette-rasped
The trees, fields and
Art Competition
voice. It could hardly be
peace of the county road
heard over the blaring
gave way to houses, barking
speakers of the television.
dogs, yawning children and stalling cars. Static
“Yes, Mama. Came to make you
mixed with bits of talk and country music came
breakfast,” he replied.
“About time. I been waiting.”
Job didn’t respond; instead, he made his
way to the refrigerator for eggs, bacon, butter
and milk, then to the pantry for flour, salt,
baking powder and soda, and to the cabinet
for a bowl and a skillet. He moved to the table
and emptied his hands. Sounds of a game show
serenaded him as he mixed and shaped biscuits,
sizzled eggs and bacon and poured two mugs
of coffee, as he had done for the two since
childhood.
“It’s ready, Mama,” Job called to the living
room. He set the table as the television clicked
silent. The only noise left was the creaking and
sighing of the tired house. Job’s mother dragged
feet in aged red slippers to her seat at the head
of the table.
“No ham?” she said as she looked around.
“Forgot to get some at the store Saturday.
I’ll get some next time I go,” Job answered.
“Guess bacon’ll do me. Get the Equal,
would you?”
He nodded and stepped to the pantry,
pulling two packets from the oversized
container. Job made his way back to the table
and gave both packets to his mother.
“You talked to your sister?” she asked. Her
mouth was full of scrambled eggs and biscuit.
Job, hunched over his plate, elbows on the table,
shook his head without looking up.
“How about any of them ladies over at
First Baptist?” She continued the interrogation.
Again, he shook his head.
“Well, you ain’t no good for gossip, are
you? Ha!” she said. Job looked up, chewing,
with a deep exhalation. He looked at her, his
eyes the same color as hers, then went back to
his food.
“Watch the news this morning?” he asked,
without looking up.
“Yeah, nothing real interesting.
Something about the war and then something
about the election,” she replied. “They didn’t
have any celebrities or anything like that on, so
I changed to the soap channel.”
“I see,” Job said.
“You sound like your father.”
“You heard from him lately?” Job knew
it would hurt her, but he needed to know. She
didn’t respond; she continued to stir coffee that
was growing cold and already tasted of bittersweet Equal.
“You coming to Wednesday Fellowship
with me tonight?” Job asked, though he knew
the answer.
“I don’t know, son. I don’t think so, really.
It’s just so far over there, and it wears me out
so,” she replied. Job nodded, scraping his fork
over his now empty plate.
“You ain’t…” he started, then decided
against it. He held his mug with large,
calloused hands and cleared his throat. “Are you
gonna ever leave this house? It’s been twelve
years. Next Thursday. That’ll make it twelve
years exactly.”
She stared at him, then moved to fumble
in her robe for a package of Marlboro Reds and
a lighter.
“Don’t you…don’t you…” she said as
she lit a cigarette. “Don’t tell me that like I
don’t know it, like I haven’t been looking at
that calendar on the wall over there every day,
knowing it was coming up.” She looked out
the wide window over the sink, smoke coming
from her pale, thin lips, and sighed. A glance at
her son, and she stood, motioning toward Job’s
plate. He didn’t respond; she slid the plate past
his elbows and placed it on hers. Job’s mother
turned to the sink.
“Maybe,” she said, eyes still watching out
the window.
Job nodded as he stood. At the coat rack,
he wrapped a brown scarf that itched more
43
than it warmed around his thick neck. His
hand hesitated on the doorknob; he cleared his
throat, then stepped over the linoleum checks
to where his mother stood, head bent, with
her wrinkled hands on the porcelain sink. She
turned to look at him with red eyes.
“Maybe,” she said again. Job leaned down
and kissed her on the cheek, then walked back
to the old Cadillac and onto the familiar roads.
Aribba!
Elizabeth Seratt
Photograph
44
Fish
Boram Lee
Photograph
When Surya Ceased to Smile
Christina Moore
Honorable Mention—Short Story Competition
Surya, god of the burning orange sun,
rode across the sky and peeped over black
mountains of sand and rock, moments before
chasing away the dark of night. He ripped
open the sky with his massive reach, creating
mirages of puddles on the dusty road, pouring
out lavenders, magentas, and citrus bliss onto
the winding way, blinding all with his golden
skin. When I closed my eyes, I saw spots swirling in my vision, resembling the jewels on his
golden chariot, whose wheels stirred the dust on
the horizon into majestic clouds. My eyeballs
searched behind closed lids for a sanctuary from
the assault of first morning light. Sand and dust
swirled through the open windows, stinging
my cheeks and turning my mouth gritty. Surya
grinned, creating a haze around the mountains,
the road, the bus, and the crisp canal below, the
only contrasting blue in a sea of taupe.
There were fifty-four students and four
teachers on the bus that morning; I had counted
them myself. All the windows on the bus were
down, most of them stuck permanently that
way. Students rested against others to protest
the early morning tribute to school, others sat
entranced with the beige sea of rocks and sand
that swelled into the deep canal, the sweat of
their faces causing their brown cheeks to fuse
with the confining panes. On our route to
school, we rode elbow to elbow every morning on the dusty narrow strip that stretched for
miles along the edge of the canal, separated by a
single frail rail. I was always afraid of riding on
the right side of the bus because of the intimidating steep hill that rolled into the mystic blue,
so instead, for the majority of the bus ride, I
stared into the blank façade of the glaring sand
mountains.
To me, the road seemed abandoned, like
a neglected dirty child; it was small and rarely
traveled by any other vehicle other than our
rusted bus. If and when it rained it seemed like
a wet dog; more of a nuisance than a being,
or in the case of a road, a necessary path for
transportation. In a day, we might pass three
cars or camels total. The smaller kids would
ogle at the camels, skin that blended in with
the sands behind them. They always seemed to
spit or ignore the kids and continue to meander as their riders saluted us, outfitted in desert
wear; large cloths of rough fabric in browns and
yellows wrapped over sun-darkened heads and
faces.
Every morning the bus goes to three
different villages to pick up students and the
four teachers to transport to our school. Since
I live next door to the bus driver, I’m one of six
who endure the entire 65km bus ride to Bodeli.
I am always the first to rise in the house, even
before the sun even considers its dastardly siege
of the sky. I am required to finish my chores
before my daily trip, so I gather eggs and water
the garden, full of herbs and spices, whose
scents fill my nostrils with the prospects of
succulent Indian dishes to come, all growing
on the northeast side of our little shack. I go
next door with my books and eat breakfast
with the bus driver; his wife and my mother
struck an agreement concerning our small
spice garden that allows me to have free meals
45
46
every morning before my long ride to school.
as the oil monster swerved behind the bus, but
We never talk a lot to each other in the cool
regained its beastly posture within seconds. All
mornings, but just savor his wife’s rich Indian
of our stares were interrupted by a large pot
cooking as his own small children sleep soundly
hole.
on a floor pallet.
The bus driver was stomping on the
I finally opened my eyes and looked up at
brakes with great force, but received no
him, his eyes squinted against the glare of the
response. He jerked the wheel fervently left
road and the dust stirred by Surya’s dancing
and right with his purple knuckles, tears glidfeet. He held tight to the wheel, as if detering down his caramel cheeks. A knowing
mined to win an epic battle against the yellow
tear slid down my own face, blurring out the
giant. Our old bus creaked around each curb,
bright Surya, and rolled over my clenched jaw
swaying from left to right and bouncing at each
as everyone began to panic. As the edge of the
bump in the road. Some of the more active chilroad neared, I slid over to the seat across the
dren would giggle every time their small bodies
aisle from mine and looked over three screamwould be lifted off the plastic bus seat and
ing girls into the deep blue canal. My body
slammed back down again.
beat into the thinly cushioned seats, bruising
In the distance, a monster began to
my bones with each bump, but it meant nothapproach. Its four wheels created a tornado of
ing to me. The youngest girl sitting in the
sand in front of us, its
seat I peered over dug
massive teeth glaring a
her youthful face into
vicious smile. The truck
my shirt, her arms holdwas covered in oil, making
ing tight to my waist.
it seem to have a mosaic
The driver laid his
black skin. The bus driver
head in his arms on the
tightened his grip on the
wheel, surrendering to
wheel even more, preparSaraswati’s terminating
ing for the dangerous pass
pull.
on the narrow strip. The
Then, we reached
truck rushed towards us.
ecstasy. My body released
All of a sudden, a shadow
as the dusty road sank
Seaweed and Fish
overtook the bus; Surya had
out of view and the bus floated
Boram Lee
ceased smiling upon us. The chiltowards the sapphire water. My
Photograph
dren looked in silence as the truck
feet felt light on the dirt-covered
neared.
bus floor as my hair floated
I could hear the hearts beating out of the
around my brow and my fingertips barely
chests of my schoolmates. The truck flew past,
caressed the roof of the bus. The little girl
its mirror coming inches from my face, only to
opened her red eyes, awestruck by the moment
hit the window with great force, cracking it and
of finalizing euphoria. Pencils and notebooks
shaking the entire bus. The school bus moaned
swam through the air and backpacks chased
and creaked as the driver tapped the brakes
them to the rear of the bus. All were silent as
fiercely and turned to scream some obscenithey absorbed their dwindling moments of
ties, only for them to fall onto ignorant ears.
rapture. My body slammed against the seat,
He returned to his duties as everyone watched
an audible crack sounding from my chest.
Everything went black around me.
I blindly felt the blood on my legs as I
searched the floor for anchorage as I endured
sharp quakes of the confining bus. My hands
searched the ground and strained blood from
sand on the floor. As my vision came back, I
saw that the little girl no longer wept, but laid
her head forward against the seat as a warm
pool of blood formed in her lap, her hand limp
at her side. A boy in the back screamed, pulling a sharpened pencil out of a developing red
spot on his linen arm; I attempted to wrestle my
limp leg out of the seat legs, letting out a terrible cry in pain, anguish, and frustration. The
bus vibrated for a few seconds, rattling my brain
until I was sure it would give, just as the bus
driver had. My head shook so badly that chips
of my teeth scratched at the sides of my mouth.
With every bump, my body wrapped
around the leg further and further. I struggled,
but was still unable to see what was coming
through my tears. Before I knew it, everything
jerked and silhouettes of humans flew forward
and then out of my sight. Water began flooding into the bus through the open windows and
onto broken bodies in the seats. Fervently, the
few able people began trying to close the stubborn windows to keep the water out, stepping
on hands and legs in the ineffectual process.
Their efforts were to no avail; the old windows
continued to allow the crystalline water to pour
into the bus.
Saraswati danced along the shoreline
and swirled into eddies and small whirlpools.
She was beautiful, with mosaic skin and ice
blue eyes, but evasive; no one has ever held her
besides Surya, and no mortal would ever be
able to. Her translucent hair haloed her sovereign face, which always contained mirth and
Lights
Boram Lee
Photograph
mischief, but sometimes held anger and jealousy. There were stories that she was an envious
goddess, and whenever she was angered, her
fine hair turned into tentacles that would snap
up and drag beautiful girls or rogue men into
the nadir of her home.
They began pushing small bodies out of
the open windows and pounding the emergency door open, but we were trapped. Water
encompassed the entire bus, turning the
windows from a scene of taupe sand to liquid
blue hands writhing their fingers into the bus
window. The lessened weight loosened its grip
on my leg. People slowly gave into the song of
Saraswati, goddess of the water, as she nudged
and caressed us deeper into her abyss. Moments
went by until everyone slowed and stopped
moving, accepting their fate of an eternity with
the sinuous deity. I looked through the crystalline window for the last time before my vision
was embraced with darkness and saw Surya
make a final reach for me, but Saraswati struck
back at him and would not let him touch me.
Slowly, his smile faded, as did my vision, as did
my pain, as did my life. I should have resented
that I was the pawn in the battle between the
two jealous gods, but I accepted the moment
when Surya ceased to smile.
47
Contributors’ Notes
Cecily Carlisle (New Albany) Cecily defines herself
with a quotation from William Faulkner: “I feel like
a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.” Her favorites
include a dish of toast with hot coffee and a paperback copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. After
graduating, she plans to “keep on feeling things and
maybe write about ’em.”
Austin Clinton (Hattiesburg) Like Oscar Wilde,
Austin believes that “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all,” and
he envies couches for their constant comfort and
“coolness.” He aspires to attend medical school after
majoring in biomedical engineering at Mississippi
State University.
Robert Cook (Southaven) To Robert, poetry is as
instinctive as breathing. Robert would love to meet
a Buddhist monk, and for the future, he foresees a
change in himself.
48
Tiffany Croft (Dry Creek) Tiffany has been most
influenced by the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
and she can relate to a window before any other
piece of furniture. Though she dreams of visiting
Japan someday, Tiffany’s plan for now is to live as
long as possible.
Kalina Deng (Greenville) To Kalina, creativity
is the expression of personality and imagination.
She admires the work of Rivers Gainspoletti and
Vera Wang. In the words of Coco Chanel, Kalina
believes that “In order to be irreplaceable, one must
always be different.” She hopes to one day have a
career in fashion design or pediatric oncology.
Sweta Desai (Jackson) Sweta sees art as the ideal
stress reliever, and to her, “Freedom is not worth
having if it does not include the freedom to make
mistakes.” She would like to travel the world, attend
college, and major in graphic design.
Casey Dickson (New Albany) Casey believes that
“You should do unto others as you would have them
do unto you,” and she’s found that art is a valuable
means of self-expression. She plans to attend the
honors college at Louisiana State University, where
she will major in psychology and continue listening
to Kelly Clarkson.
Kate Dubickas (Ocean Springs) Though Kate dreams
of meeting Cedric Diggory, she has been most
influenced by the work of Sharon Creech. She finds
“a little safe haven” in art and creativity. She hopes
to one day become a marine scientist and train
whales.
Pauline Dyer (West Point) Pauline has been most
influenced by the words and life of Frederick
Douglass. In her own words, however, “an artist
can only create; not create a perception” for the art’s
beholder. Along with visiting Paris, France, Pauline
plans on becoming an actress.
Jane Girard (Richland) Aside from Jane’s love of
Italian food, she enjoys the artwork of Walter
Anderson, and she sees art as a way to look inward
and define herself. Though her motto is “Take one
day at a time,” Jane also sees herself pursuing a
degree in chemistry at the University of Southern
Mississippi in the near future.
Tiffany Harris (Meridian) As a young writer,
Tiffany finds that inspiration comes best when she’s
at a desk. Her own work has been shaped by the
writings of Eudora Welty, and she sees creativity as
a great way to free one’s mind. When considering
the future, Tiffany is unsure what hers will hold.
Clayton Jacobs (Picayune) Clayton holds the work
of Dr. Seuss in high regard, and he envies barstools
for their ability to spin forever. His motto in life is
“World peace!” In the future, he will attend college.
Lawson King (Indianola) Lawson says, “I can accept
failure but cannot accept to give up.” He loves art
and continually looks to the life of his grandmother
for inspiration. He hopes to minor in the subject
along with a major in psychology.
Ginny Kramer (Quitman) Ginny believes that
creativity is a universal asset, and “it’s more a matter
of whether one chooses to express it, and how.” She
has been most influenced by Clive Barker and hopes
to soon meet Kal Penn. One day, Ginny will work
for National Geographic and have a pet Arctic fox.
Boram Lee (Purvis) For Boram, “Life is rad,”
and cupcakes are the greatest food on Earth.
Though she would like to meet God and travel to
Magrathea, her immediate plan is to become an
infectious disease specialist at CDC.
Jack Li (Starkville) Jack’s motto is “Live with no
regrets, die with no regrets.” Over the years, he has
enjoyed reading the Boxcar Children series, and
he would most like to meet Napoleon Bonaparte.
Jack plans to major in business at the University of
Pennsylvania.
Joshua Lonthair (Long Beach) Joshua dreams of
meeting Jacques-Yves Cousteau and visiting the
Great Barrier Reef. To him, the world is full of
beauty, and it just takes people to find it. Joshua will
attend the University of Miami Honors College and
dual-major in marine biology and biochemistry.
Miranda Shugars (Vicksburg) Miranda finds inspiration in the poetry of William Carlos Williams,
and in her own words: “I refuse to believe it’s not
butter!” She hopes to travel to Switzerland.
Aisha Lyons (Southaven) According to Aisha, “Life’s
too short to be normal.” She would most like to
meet Vincent van Gogh, and she feels that “creativity can’t be created or destroyed, or even defined
because it exists everywhere, in many forms.” She
hopes to become a pathologist.
Dong Song (Oxford) Dong defines himself with
a quotation by George Santayana: “The beginning of happiness is the knowledge of the possible.”
He has been most influenced by the artwork of
Gustav Klimt and hopes to one day earn a degree in
architecture.
Parker Lundy (Purvis) Parker thinks “art is pretty
cool” and looks to Lynyrd Skynyrd for inspiration.
After graduating from Yale, Parker hopes to achieve
his ultimate goal, becoming a bricklayer.
Christina Moore (Gulfport) Like Henry Ford,
Christina believes that “Whether you can or you
can’t, you’re right.” She finds inspiration in the
work of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and believes “art
brings emotion into our scientific world.” She
plans to become a doctor after graduating from the
University of South Alabama.
Erin Rauenhorst (Sumrall) For Erin, “Art is really
important. It’s a nice excuse to let your mind go.”
She feels that “Life is what you make it,” and she
envies the bird for its ability to fly. Erin can see
herself one day visiting another planet.
Marie Rowland (Sarah) Marie sees art as a way to
make the reality of the world more tolerable. Along
with baked ziti, she loves white tigers, Leonardo da
Vinci, and Eileen Regina Edwards. She wants to
major in architecture at Mississippi State University
and eventually earn a Master’s degree.
Thompson Segars (Iuka) Thompson looks to Bill
Watterson for inspiration and believes that people
should express themselves more often. He could see
himself as a rocking chair before any other piece of
furniture, because they rock all day long. Thompson
hopes to someday attend culinary school.
Rachel Selph (Olive Branch) Although Rachel would
“rather be without salt for a week than without tea
for a day,” her favorite foods are mushrooms, ravioli, and sushi. She would love to meet Walt Disney,
become a millionaire, and work for Pixar.
Elizabeth Seratt (Greenville and Vicksburg)
Elizabeth lives by the words of Lord Byron: “If I
don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.” She would
like to meet Einstein and visit every continent, but
for now, she’ll be content with pursuing her goal of
becoming a gypsy, Brothers Grimm scholar, environmental activist, professional student, and writer.
Stephen Smith (Columbus) Stephen agrees with
David Frost, who says, “Don’t aim for success if you
want it, just do what you love and believe in.” He
wishes he could meet Winston Churchill or travel
to England. He plans to have a career as a physician
and surgeon.
Adam Stanford (Ripley) Adam sees himself as an
appreciator of art in all forms, whether it be a painting or short story. He admires the life of Ralph
Waldo Emerson, from whom he’s learned that
“Character is higher than intellect. A great soul
will be strong to live, as well as to think.” Adam
will continue studying medicine at the University
of Mississippi’s Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors
College.
Shelby Steelhammer (Gulfport) Shelby can find
inspiration in anyone and anything. In the words
of Jean-Luc Godard, she feels that “Photography is
truth.” She wants to travel the world, but Shelby’s
immediate plans include majoring in chemical
engineering and pharmacy at Mississippi State
University.
Christopher Vick (Southaven) Though Chris
values the work of author Michael Crichton, if he
could meet anyone, he’d choose Harry Potter and
Hermione Granger. When considering art, he feels
that “it’s a nice thing to go into, just don’t let it go to
your head.” Chris plans on being an English major
at Truman State University.
Alex Wang (Clinton) Alex feels that the ability to
create makes us human, and for him, “Knowledge
defines, art transcends.” In the past, he has found
Ms. Jones inspiring, but Alex is unsure what the
future will hold.
Ena Wei (Starkville) Ena admires the work of
Renoir, Monet, and Jodi Picoult, but she lives by the
words of Voltaire: “To enjoy life, we must touch at it
lightly.” She believes nature is most beautiful without human interference, and she is waiting for life to
surprise her.
Southern Voices
is a magazine of creative works by students at the
Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science
1100 College Street, MUW-1627
Columbus, Mississippi 39701
Southern Voices is available to read on the Internet at
http://www.msms.k12.ms.us